St. John’s Church & Railway Bridge, Bethnal Green, London
WAG: project instigators and architects
Project description: When the railway embankment running north from Liverpool St Station, parallel to Mare Street, was constructed in the nineteenth century, the century long relationship between John Soane’s exquisite St John’s church (built in ) and Bethnal Green High Road was broken. The utilitarian steel bridge that now crosses Bethnal Green High Road 5m above the pavement level, all but blocks views of the church from the high road, and completely destroys the place that must have existed between the calm white stone of Soane’s modest masterpiece and the chaos of Bethnal Green market streching out in front of it.
WAG have developed a series of optical and digital installation proposals for the railway bridge that will allow a sense of the space of the place that might have existed there during the 18th and 19th centuries to be discerned. WAG’s first ideas examined the possible construction of a huge periscope which would sit like a lid over the bridge, bouncing reflections of the hidden view of the church over the bridge. Other kaliedoscopic variations of this machine attenuated the verfremdung - or alienation - of the originary scene.
However, whilst these analogue proposals had an elegant visibility to their mechanism, this same visibility would literally sometimes block other parts of the church view not currently obscured! WAG therefor settled upon a more sublime digital option. A bank of video cameras fixed to one side of the bridge record hidden views of the church, which are played back in real time on a continuous digital screen which lines the other side of the bridge. As this screen is digital, it is of course possible to discuss what other content it might carry. This might include local community content, commissioned video art, and advertising (which might pay for the project.
The intention of the project is not to simply make the bridge (modernity) invisible, but rather involves something like a dialectical aufhebung - or sublimation - of the lost view of the church building. The project hopes to encourage thinking about the role and ownership of images and views within the public realm, and to provoke questions about the experience of historical space.
WAG have started discussing the idea with Spacia and Railtrack, who own the property.
This piece of work is part of the Democratic Billboard, an ongoing WAG research and development project. This series of urban, architectural and art ideas explores the possible future development of the emerging media, advertising and communications infrastructures within the public spaces of the metropolis.
